Have you done your business plan yet?

Crikey! Where has time gone? It’s March already and the end of the business financial year for most of us. I’ll be nagging my liber8yourbusiness clients about their business plan for 2011 – 12 year. As Winston Churchill famously said, “fail to plan and you plan to fail”. Your business plan is your compass, your map and the guiding light that keeps you and your team on track. I get all of my liber8yourbusiness clients to plan their business right out to its completion, when they execute their exit strategy. I also get them to complete their annual business plan … which takes them further towards their end goal. Here are the key areas your business plan needs to cover:

Product Development

Sales & Marketing

Team

Operations

Financial

Look at each area as if it were a department in a bigger company and you are asking the Manager of that area to give you their plan for the year. The plan for each area needs to have clearly defined objectives, strategies to meet those objectives and action steps to bring the strategies into reality. There needs to be financial goals and expenditure requirements under each heading. Your sales and marketing department will set the income goals for the year. All income goals and expenditures are then put into your budget for the year, which in turn becomes your monthly compass.

With a good plan in place you can meet every month to review progress. You can stay focused, prioritise your actions and make good decisions knowing where you are trying to get to this year.

If you are a liber8yourbusiness online client you can find a copy of my annual business plan template in Session 3. If you are not a client but would like the template please email admin@liber8yourbusiness.com